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yom Panggalih and Nur Syawaluddin were strolling to the mosques in their respective neighborhoods in Surakarta, Central Java, for afternoon prayer when Densus 88 counterterror squad personnel appeared out of nowhere and stopped them on Dec. 29 last year.

In a round of interrogation sessions at a local police station, they were queried on whether they were involved in a terror group led by Abu Jundi and whether they knew of a man named Hamzah. After a few hours, they were allowed to leave.

Ayom and Nur claim they were tortured during their brief arrests, and that the trauma still lingers until today. The police have offered no apology, let alone restoration of the men’s names after they were tainted by the terror allegations.

They are but two of many victims of wrongful arrest at the hands of Densus 88 officers over the past few years, since Indonesia intensified its war on terror. In 2013, police also wrongfully arrested two men, Supari and Mugi Haryanto, in Tulungagung, East Java. They were freed after being detained for two weeks without charges.

Ayom and Nur have been lauded for their courage in speaking out about their ordeals and their striving for justice.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) suspects that many wrongful arrest victims are too scared to talk for fear of police retribution.

Kontras coordinator Haris Azhar notes two flagrant mistakes that the police have often made when handling terror suspects. Firstly, they mistreat suspects, such as by making arrests without a proper warrant and resorting to torture to extract confessions. Secondly, suspects are arrested on inadequate initial evidence only to be released shortly afterward without receiving formal apology or any compensation.

“This is what happens in Indonesia. No wonder you will find terror suspects making forced confessions,” Haris says.

In fact, Government Regulation No.27/1983 guarantees that wrongful arrest victims are entitled to compensation, but in reality it is next to impossible to claim the cash because victims have to go through a discouragingly complicated court procedure during which they may still be enduring trauma.

The regulation as revised by the government last year looks good. A victim is entitled to between
Rp 500,000 (US$37.50) and Rp 100 million in compensation from the state. Detainees who die while in police custody are entitled to Rp 600 million and a suspect injured while in custody is entitled to at least Rp 25 million.

Adding to complications is the variation in understandings of what constitutes a “wrongful arrest” among state authorities and the general public.

Police and the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) swear they have never made illegal arrests despite what many people and rights organization have claimed. They see nothing wrong with cases like those involving the four suspects in Surakarta and Tulungagung because the arrests and releases of the suspects, they claim, followed their standard operating procedure.

They argue that they have the legal authority to detain and question anyone for up to a week who they believe may be involved with a terror case they are investigating, and then set them free if the police find insufficient evidence of their involvement.

“It’s impossible to make wrongful arrests because we follow standard procedures after we obtain information from intelligence,” says Brig. Gen Pol Herwan Chaidir, BNPT’s director of protection.

But Arif Maulana from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute begs to differ with Herwan. Arif argues that false arrest is possible because law enforcement agencies go by different definitions of “terror suspect”, a term not defined clearly in the Criminal Code (KUHP). Arif sees the definition in the 2003 law on terrorism as too broad, allowing the police to stretch it to interpret it in their favor when naming a suspect.

“Wrongful arrest, be it in terror or ordinary criminal cases, is a form of violence, victimizing innocent people and violating their rights,” Arif says.
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